Guys, Please listen to your customer base. Just go back to open and allow users to do what they wish. This is silly that you are trying to instill your own policy which goes against the IEEE standards for 802.11.
You’ve broken several more wyze cams from working due to this policy change.
Thanks !

Not taking sides here, but I just want to point out that Wyze does have a valid stake in this. If someone hacked into a camera on an non secure network, it could go public and the detail of the nonsecure network would be lost in the weeds. The headline would be that Wyze got hacked. That would be a huge hit to their reputation. So I think this could be for their own protection as much as yours.

In addition to people wanting to use it on public networks, I use MAC filtering on my home network. It’s much more secure than passwords, since I can easily de-provision devices without having to reconnect everyone. This policy means I have to reconfigure my network, reducing security, in order to connect the camera.

Just FYI, MAC addresses are quite easy to spoof, so if you truly think MAC filtering is much more secure than passwords, you are very mistaken.

We discussed changing this again but due to concerns about security, we will likely not allow Wyze Cams to be connected to unsecure WiFi networks.

Could you elaborate on what the concerns are? Especially when a device only needs to connect to known infrastructure that you control, the risks can be largely mitigated e.g. with HSTS, disallowing non-HTTPS connections to prevent SSL stripping-type attacks, limiting the set of root CAs you recognize, etc. These are good steps to take even if the camera is on secured Wi-Fi, e.g. if the attack is from farther upstream, like a compromised AP or wireless router.

Pushing people to workarounds like setting up a wireless repeater that ultimately goes over an open Wi-Fi network anyway just provides a false sense of security for people who don’t really understand what’s going on.

There is a balance here. You can just raise a suitably concerning warning when a user selects open Wi-Fi, or require an opt-in to allow open Wi-Fi behind “developer options” or similar.

I’m using MAC filtering instead of a wifi password. I have a whitelist of MAC addresses that I allow to connect to my network, anything that’s not listed can’t connect. Unfortunately because of this it’s not possible to create a wifi password. And because of that I can’t connect any new Wyze cams even though I have older ones working fine that were added before this password requirement nonsense. Very frustrating.

PSA: This is not secure against anyone who has half a clue about computers and can do a simple web search to get the other half.

While I do believe in security, I do not feel that companies should expect that all networks have a password. I am in the country, and I do not have a password on my Wifi. If I have to add a password to my WiFi, I will need to spend hours/days going to every device to set things up. For those who have passwords - Great - just don’t make it manditory.

I work with an organization who has campus-wide open WiFi which requires MAC address whitelisting for staff and trusted devices (connection permissions/bandwidth based on user/device), and requires landing page Ts & Cs acceptance etc… for the public (crippled permissions/bandwidth). They use all pretty hard core Cisco gear and have been in operation for some years.

I was hoping to run a pilot to replace some of their security cameras with Wyze so as to save their IT team on camera and system maintenance while improving feature set. But, due to this “feature” I can’t even get out of the gate. I guess back to the DVR box and old school security cameras!

The simple solution is for Wyze to use a secure protocol, such as htts. Even if https wifi traffic is intercepted, the attacker would NOT be able to decode it.

This is why Google has been pushing for all websites to switch over to use https.

The chances of an attacker being able to decrypt an https stream is pretty much IMPOSSIBLE.

I would say this is a pretty good reason for Wyze to use https or similar, secure protocol, and allow public, unsecured wifi networks, such as McDonald’s to be used, to view one’s cameras.

I do have a mobile lte connection, but given that a camera stream uses about 1 megabyte every 5 seconds, on average, that’s about 12 cent / minute (assuming a cost of a penny per megabyte, which is what it is on the Google Fi plan).

This isn’t bad, but public wifi’s are FREE, so 12 cents / minute versus FREE – I would go with the FREE option…

Just received several Wyze cameras that are useless to me…I don’t want or need a password on my router and will NOT reconfigure everything in the house to accommodate them. Had I known this was a requirement I would have purchased a different brand!

I use my camera to secure my vacation house and notify me of motion or activity. I rely on the free wifi of the resort it is part of to connect to Internet. My Wyze cameras won’t allow me to use this as a “security feature”, which instead renders them unusable and my house unsecure. Can you please give me a check box override to ALLOW unauthenticated wifi access!?